W&L Music Presents University Singers’ Scotland Kickoff Concert The performance is a preview of the group’s upcoming tour of Scotland.

By Erica Turman
March 19, 2019

The Department of Music at Washington and Lee University invites you to join the award-winning University Singers, under the direction of visiting choral director Morgan Luttig, in their concert on April 2 at 8 p.m. in the Wilson Concert Hall. The performance is a preview of the group’s upcoming tour of Scotland.

The University Singers are recognized as one of the finest collegiate a cappellachoirs on the East Coast. The ensemble performs a wide variety of literature at major venues across the globe while serving as artistic ambassadors for the university in concert series, music festivals, conventions and university outreach events.This year on their tour of Scotland, the University Singers willperform at locations such as Rosslyn Chapel and Stirling Castle Chapel Royal.

The tour program will feature a variety of works broken into four larger sets. The first set, titled “Through the Life,” examines sacred experience of Holy Week—exploring the Christ story from before the birth in “Jubilate Deo” by Giovanni Gabrieli through the crucifixion depicted in Daniel Elder’s “Seven Last Words from the Cross.” This piece takes the choir and audience through an emotional journey as they experience the inner turmoil of Christ, the fading heartbeat, and the ultimate exclamation of the final breath of life. The first set will then transition silently into “Let My Love Be Heard” by Jake Runestad, beginning a set on “Humanness in Grief.”

It is tradition for University Singers’ international tours to include a set of repertoires from home, as well as repertoire from the country to which they are traveling. The second half of the program will begin with a Scottish mouth-music piece titled “Fionnghuala” by Michael McGlynn, which tests the limits of how fast a singer can articulate Gaelic text. The Scottish set will culminate in Jonathan Quick’s “Loch Lomond,” truly bringing the “bonny banks of Loch Lomond” to Lexington.

The concert will round out with an all-American set featuring pieces from the Appalachian mountain tradition, a spiritual titled “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” arranged by Carol Barnett, and other folk-song favorites. The performance will end with the University Singers’ traditional performance of Stephen Paulus’s “The Road Home” and James Erb’s “Shenandoah.”

Tickets to the Scotland Kickoff Concert are free but required. Call the Lenfest Center box office today at 540-458-8000 to reserve your tickets.